VANCOUVER – U.S. border patrol agents dodged gunfire Tuesday morning after they confronted a pair of camouflage-clad men attempting to slip over the border from Canada.

Just after 9 a.m., a pair of U.S. border guards tasked with patrolling the woods between border crossing came upon two figures in a wilderness area just south of Chilliwack, B.C. Both were dressed in camouflage and carrying backpacks.

“One of those subjects fired at the agents and fled into the woods,” said Michael Milne, spokesman with the Seattle office of U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

The two officers escaped injury and were able to subdue the second figure. Immediately, calls then went out on both sides of the border to muster helicopters and search crews to look for the shooter.

“The other suspect’s location is not known,” Abbotsford Police Department spokesman Cst. Ian MacDonald told the Post in an afternoon email. “We are actively engaged in searching and, if need be, confronting the suspects should he be located in Canada”

Upper Sumas elementary school was placed into lockdown and police erected roadblocks along major thoroughfares in the area. Although, by late afternoon, many roadlocks had been dismantled and officers had taken to conducting a door-to-door search.

U.S. sources could not confirm the weapon used by the shooter, and refused to release details on the contents of the backpack.

Large sections of the Washington/British Columbia border are long, remote and lightly-populated – making it an ideal corridor for smuggled goods. Zero Avenue, a two-lane Canadian road that runs directly adjacent to the border, has no physical barriers other than a shallow ditch.

Nevertheless, the border is closely watched with an array of high-powered cameras and sensors.

“That area, over the last decade, has been used for smuggling in both directions,” said Mr. Milne.

In September of 2009, for instance, Abbotsford, B.C. men Randeep Match and Manindervir Virk were spotted just north of the border carrying $2 million worth of cocaine. The pair were later sentenced to five and a half years in prison each.

Last October, gunfire of a different sort struck the Canadian side of the border. A 32-year-old Seattle man drove a van into the Peace Arch Border Crossing just south of Vancouver shot Canadian border guard Lori Bowcock in the neck before turning the gun on himself.

The bullet missed all of Officer Bowcock’s major arteries and she was reportedly on her feet only days after the shooting.